Chapter 17—The Age of Baroque

Introduction: At first glimpse, the Baroque may seem like a continuation of the Renaissance period. Many tourists in Italy encounter Baroque works of art and assume they are looking at Renaissance art. The Baroque contains many keys to how we understand art today and is strongly linked to Modern art. This chapter explores the characteristics of Italian artistic genius in the Baroque age and looks at the spread of Baroque style throughout Western Europe, especially focusing on artists such as Bernini, Caravaggio, Gentileschi, Borromini, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer, and Poussin.

This period, like the Renaissance and Medieval times, was influenced by religious, political, and economic changes in Europe. The end of the chapter notes differences accompanying the Rococo period, and the setting of the stage for the important artistic movements that would emerge from France in the Modern period. Compare and Contrast – Susannah and the Elders by Tintoretto and Gentileschi explores subtle differences between artists working in High Renaissance and Baroque styles but using the same story theme.

A Closer Look – Art Meets History: The Funeral of the Pope takes you into the world of art from an architectural viewpoint surrounding the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005. Views of the crowds in Bernini’s Piazza reveal the sheer scale of St. Peter’s, and glimpses into the Clementine Chapel and the transept show the long history of this religion through its frescoes, sculpture, and rituals.

Chapter 17 – Why Read It? Do you like dramatic events? Airborne moments on your snowboard? A powerful scene in a movie or theatrical performance? If you do, Baroque art may have a direct visual appeal you can appreciate. The works of art in Chapter 17 reveal techniques gained by artists of the time allowing them to explore the use of the plastic elements, such as motion, light, and line in innovative ways that moved away from Renaissance Classicism just as dramatically as Hellenism broke away from Greek Classicism.

Imagine the visual impact a painting might have on its 17th-century viewer when trompe l’oeil effects make it appear as if the ceiling of a barrel vault church is literally dissolving, that light is flooding in from the sky above, and people appear to be floating weightlessly up and through the opening!

The immediacy of a scene such as Judith beheading Holofernes or Jan Vermeer’s Woman with a Water Jug seemed as real to 17th-century connoisseurs of painting as virtual reality images seem to computer connoisseurs of today. That’s dramatic! The innovations of architects such as Bernini, Francesco Borromoni, or Louis Le Vau and Jules Hardouin-Mansart must have been as thrilling and unusual to viewers of the day as are the plastic architectural innovations of today’s leading architects, Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid, or Frank Gehry.

Finding out more about the Baroque and Rococo periods may lead you to discover some influences on our contemporary times and art. Bold, innovative, and dramatic, these periods paved the way for looking at the world through art and other innovations, such as telescopes. This is what we will call “Modern” art in Chapter 19.

A brief glimpse at artists such as Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt van Rijn will reveal their new roles as innovative artists as well as entrepreneurs, applying their skills to commissioned group portraits, dramatic portrayals of royalty and commoners alike, and self portraits, as well as the more traditional religious and mythological themes.

Perhaps you have never heard of Artemisia Gentileschi, Diego Velázquez or Nicolas Poussin. You will learn more about them and their influences on later artists and art movements: the Impressionists in France; the Feminist artists of the 1970s and 1980s; and the Neoclassicists, Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. So, even if you know nothing about the Baroque other than having heard some of Mozart’s music on the radio, you may find you relate to the innovative thinking and excitement that belonged to that period and to our own! The Rococo arts may feel persuasively familiar for their sumptuous physical beauty, materiality, and entertainment value. See how many parallels you can discern between this rich past art heritage and our own times.

Understanding Concepts: Many historians view the Baroque age as containing many elements of the modern age. Can you think of forms of art, music, and dance, as well as other social elements that are still part of today’s world?

1. Read Chapter 17 and try placing some parallels from the Baroque period and today's world culture in the chart below:

Baroque Period                                                   Today

Art:

Music:

Dance:

Other:

2. Contact with other cultures and exploration of the globe made big changes in how people of the Baroque period and subsequent ages thought of the world. Look in Chapter 18 at the art from Native Americans and Oceanic tribal groups. Imagine what an encounter between the European explorers and these people must have been like. List some of the historical events that mark encounters between cultures from this time period:

3. The Baroque period is noted for innovative thinking in the fields of astronomy and physics. Note some of the new thinking and influential concepts presented to the world at this time by Newton, Galileo, Kepler, and others.

4. Revisit the timeline sources you found earlier for Chapter 13, so you can see how the Renaissance and the Baroque eras fit into the spectrum of time since prehistory. Compare what was happening in Europe to what was happening in China, India, Africa, South, and North America (see Chapter 18). Notes:

 

Making Connections: The age of Baroque follows up on many of the themes from the Renaissance, but also transforms them. The Baroque fostered people such as Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Martin Luther, and Mozart, and visual artists such as Bernini, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Rubens, Poussin, Caravaggio, and Gentileschi.

1. Find some in-depth information about two of these prominent creative figures, so that you can fill in a bit of history surrounding the creation of artworks in this chapter.

A.

B.

2. What were some of the major historical events occurring during this period impacting the way people thought about their world? Make a list.

3. This chapter depicts two works with the subjects of Judith and Holofernes: one by Caravaggio and one by Gentileschi, both of whom were surrounded by controversy at some point in their lives. The subject of the art, quite violent, is also controversial.

•     How does Caravaggio's version of Judith and Holofernes compare to his painting of The Conversion of St. Paul? What stylistic similarities can you detect?

•     In examining the comparison of Caravaggio’s treatment of Judith and Holofernes to that of Artemisia Gentileschi’s, can you gain insight into the personal worlds of these two artists?

•     What can you find out about the life of Artemisia Gentileschi? How did being a woman artist in Baroque Italy differ from being a woman artist today? (Go to chapter 21 and view the Guerrilla Girls poster (image 21-41). Are there any similarities to the struggles Gentileschi experienced as a woman artist?

•     Think of some stereotypical personality traits generally attributed to artists. Make a few notes and see if they fit Gentileschi and Caravaggio or other artists we have studied so far. As with any stereotype, most of the public image concocted about an individual is untrue. What kinds of other traits do you perceive artists as having that are not so easily generalized?

4. Compare and Contrast – Susannah and the Elders by Tintoretto and Gentileschi: As the exercise in your text mentions, there are often reasons why an artist will choose to depict a work of art in a certain way or select specific themes to develop in their art. With Gentileschi, a rape victim herself, she often depicted female subjects as avenging heroines or seductive but innocent and virtuous figures. If you are interested in the contextual aspects of how an artist’s biographical information is interwoven with what and how they create, you might choose to research the life of that artist in more depth. Certainly, as with Gentileschi’s life, you will find out more than the mere surface coincidence of life events. A scholarly book about her, Artemisia Gentileschi Around 1622:  The Shaping and Reshaping of an Artistic Identity, by Mary D. Garrard, brings to light Artemisia’s career as an artist. Many of her artworks had erroneously been attributed to her male contemporaries, since few art historians from the late 19th and 20th century believed that women possessed either the intellect or the talent to paint as well as a man. Research an artist you find interesting, drawing parallels between their life history and their art subjects.

5. A Closer Look – Art Meets History: The Funeral of a Pope: As you read about the death of Pope John Paul II and the elaborate funeral rituals carried out within the vast expanses of the piazza designed by Gianlorenzo Bernini or the nave of St. Peter’s Basilica Church, what impressions come to mind? Even if you are not of the Catholic faith, events such as this affect people’s ideas about religion, politics, and world history. Make a few notes about what you remember hearing, seeing, or reading during this larger than life funeral in Rome. Do any of your impressions contain images of the architecture of St. Peter’s Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, or the large oval piazza? Perhaps you have visited Vatican City and were easily able to recall specific details of these spaces as they were shown on TV as the backdrop for the ceremonies taking place. Make a few notes about specific features that are distinctly of the Renaissance period in Italy, and some that are specifically Baroque. What commonalities tie these two historical art movements together in this place and time? What are some distinct differences? How do scale, acoustic properties, elaborate stone inlay, use of light, and specific architectural features such as barrel vaults, sculptural niches, or bronze castings conspire together to create a sense of religious tradition, ancient precedent, and authority, as is intended for all the activities surrounding a Pope? How does this affect your personal concepts of the role of religion in one’s life? Write your observations and thoughts here:

Taking Notes: Chapter 17 presents a challenge to you in detecting some of the ways in which the Baroque artists chose to depart from the Renaissance arts. Their solutions to composition in painting, sculpting, and creating architecture are quite divergent. You will need to separate Spanish Baroque inventions from Dutch and Italian ones. Your note taking will probably involve small sketches of some of the changes—for example the way Francesco Borromini takes Classical architectural elements and transforms them. Or the differing ways Velázquez, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio use chiaroscuro. There are only 32 images in Chapter 17, so your instructor may show more examples of Baroque art in class. Be prepared to note these, probably some by same artists as in the text—for example, another Rubens or another Vermeer—and to take note of subject or title and quickly sketch the work, so you will be able to distinguish one from the others.

You’ll have already encountered some of the 12 vocabulary words in this chapter. Look in Chapter 6 to refresh your memory about impasto painting, and see Chapter 15 to review some of the plan concepts for churches, such as the Greek-cross plan and the Latin-cross plan to see how much Borromini altered them. In a few words, describe tenebrism to yourself. Become familiar with the work of Peter Paul Rubens and Nicolas Poussin, so that you can see how people divided into two groups of thinking—the Poussinistes and the Rubenistes—about what painting was supposed to accomplish for the viewer. (See Chapter 19.)

Preparing for Tests: Preparation for a test on the Baroque should be inclusive of detail and specific events for that time period. Your instructor will feel free to test you on titles of the artworks, artists’ names, countries of origin, movements (is it Spanish Baroque, French Rococo, Late Italian Renaissance, or Mannerism?), and even some of the applicable vocabulary terms, such as impasto or tenebrism. Specific dates might figure into test questions, and some historical events known to have influenced the arts, such as the Reformation and the Counter Reformation, might even be included.

Louis Pasteur, a French chemist of the 19th century, is credited with a quotation applicable to your situation as a student of diverse subjects: "Chance favors the prepared mind." Here are three sample test questions; answers are found at the end of this chapter:

•     Image17-7

For The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, Bernini portrays the following to enhance the sculpture:

A. uncontrollable passion          B. vastly different textures

C. "rays" of divine light              D. all of these

•     Image 17-19

The figures in this painting by Rembrandt are:

A. dignitaries from Germany      B. Protestant Reform Church leaders

B. judges and lawyers               D. merchants of the Cloth Guild

•     Image 17-25

Who is the artist of Happy Accidents of the Swing? A. Jean-Honoré Fragonard           B. Rembrandt van Rijn

C. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun        D. Nicolas Poussin

•     Sample essay question: Using one visual example, describe and explain in detail
how Baroque artists created artistic compositions that appeared to be more
dramatic and action filled than previous Renaissance works on the same themes.

Review other sample questions for Baroque art on the Understanding Art website (www.cengage.com/art/fichner-rathus9e), in the Student Test Packet, or on ArtExperience Online for Understanding Art.

Enhancing Your Observational Powers: By observing our environment and trying some things first hand, it becomes easier to understand the artistic goals of those who lived in another era.

1. Using a single ordinary light source such as a lamp, try setting up a “living composition,” using objects or a willing model, in order to reconstruct the lighting conditions found in tenebrism, as found in Caravaggio’s compositions.

•     Depending upon how you position things and the light source, what appears to be the prominent focal point of your composition?

•     What could you do to add even more dramatic effects to your composition?

2. Observe Baroque artworks and discern some of the main themes used.

•     What kinds of emotional states are being portrayed?

•     If you were going to contemporize some of these themes, what would need to change from the Baroque style? What could remain the same?

3. Does stop-action photography or strobe lighting recreate some of the same effects as the Baroque’s eventful moment? Look at some of the photographs in Chapter 8.

•     How do portraits from the Baroque, such as Rembrandt’s and Velasquez’s, compare to portrait photography?

•     If you were going to construct a photographic “genre” scene of daily activities, how would it compare to a genre scene from the Baroque period? Do you think Vermeer's painting of the Young Woman with a Water Jug is a genre scene? Write your notes below:

For More Understanding: Your text mentions a few other examples of Baroque art. Chapter 18 is helpful in relating what was occurring in other world cultures at the same time as the Baroque (for some cultures, this was the time of a first encounter with Western culture, for good or ill). Chapter 5 and 6 have other examples of drawing and painting by Rembrandt van Rijn. Go online to find a work by Larry Rivers called “Dutch Masters and Cigars, 1963” that satirizes Rembrandt's Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild, as it had appeared on a 20th-century cigar box. Chapter 2 also features another stunning sculpture by Gianlorenzo Bernini, the Apollo and Daphne (image 2-74)-for fun, compare it to the iPod advertisement, (image 2-32) for its dramatic use of motion). Chapter 7 shows a print made by Rembrandt depicting the crucifixion of Christ (image 7-8). Of course the famous saltcellar by Benvenuto Cellini (image 12-24) in Chapter 12 deserves a second look. Study and research some of these readily available examples in order to enhance your understanding of Baroque art.

Consult the website (www.cengage.com/art/fichner-rathus9e) as well.

ArtExperience Online: Use the flashcard feature to review images and create your own study set.

Also learn more about the information and artwork presented in the Compare and Contrast and A Closer Look sections.

Notes and Links to Remember:

(answers to sample multiple-choice questions: d, d, a)